Archive for the 'hospitality exchange' Category

Citizen Logistics

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-10-29
in hospitality exchange, open life and trust metrics
. 0 Comments

Together, Joe Edelman and I were the dynamic duo of the CouchSurfing Collective in New Zealand. Joe came with fantastic ideas, that were unfortunately not realized in Nelson. Fortunately he also improved the infrastructure of CS in such a profound way that his work there is probably the main reason that the website is still up. It was great working with him and we had many magic moments, where we really thought were about to make stuff happen that would change the world in a profound way.

When I saw a glimpse of James’ headline, Swarming people to work, I had a faint hint that some of the most important of Joe’s ideas were being realized by elsewhere. My online situation at the time is not great, so I sent Joe a text without even checking Joi Ito’s post. The next time I came online I was happy to see that Joe accelerated. From CitizenLogistics.com:

Television and computer games provide expertly designed entertainment and fun… but when we have to deal with our real lives, we’re all alone. When will participating in the real world and dealing with real issues be just as adventurous, easy, collaborative, and fun?

Very soon! We’re developing new game-like ways of working, volunteering, having a good time, and finding assistance. Anyone can play, and you get points for making other people’s dreams come true. Our software lets you find cool things to do, build teams, and connect people with jobs and resources, all via text messaging and geolocation in the real world.

My favorite part of the teaser website is about Open Life:

Our technology will transform everyday life by bringing a new opportunities for teamwork, community, and adventure to everyone involved. We offer a real-time, map-based interface for finding and mobilizing available people out in the world via their cell phones. For mobile users, we have a txt-based interface for declaring your availability and finding opportunities near wherever you are. Combining geolocation, text messaging, trust metrics, sophisticated permissions, and a structure for social incentives, we integrate with many other websites and platforms, and offer a web-wide API for aggregating real world availability and trust.

Related reading:

The Wiki Party - closer to reality

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-10-15
in hospitality exchange and wiki
. 0 Comments

Last year I did a BoF at Wikimania 2006 about The Wiki Party, the idea to start a political party. Today Anu sent me a link to a Facebook group with this same title. I jokingly told people “when I’m 40 years old I will start this party if no one else did before then”. Fortunately I won’t have to, anymore. Of course, it’s happenning in Finland. Olli Sirén was considering to run a campaign to the Helsinki City Council. From the main page of wikiparty.net:

Wikiparty is bringing new ways to do politics. It´s based on the idea of open politics. This site will be the international basis for this new party. The movement has started in Finland and will spread around the world in one form or another. Democracy is grown weak around the world. Voting percentages are in a steady decline.

Let’s put together a Wikiparty. A party that creates its political opinions in the same way that Wikipedia forms its articles. Let’s try to think ways to systematically create political force. This party could vote for its representatives to different political parliaments. These “agents” of Wikiparty would interpret the ideas of Wikiparty to real voting situations and pass the ideas of the community to the parliament.

This way we could challenge the traditional parties to a debate between weak and strong democracy. This kind of virtual community that aims to a real life political chance, could reach over national borders and grasp problems caused by for example globalization or climate change.

And yesterday I learned about Kaltura, a social-networky video editing tool, kind-of-a crossbred between wiki, and youtube with the promise to release their software under the GNU General Public license.

It’s good to have local friends!

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-10-13
in Italy and hospitality exchange
. 0 Comments

Thanks to Fabrizia, who put an ad in a local weekly, I have a new place. She and Davide have been very helpful.Unfortunately amylin hasn’t come back from New York yet, but that gives me the opportunity to make our place look good. There’s a garden, roses, a garden table, a bath tub and a lot of beds! I think the 72 year old landlady used to rent it to 4 students. Today I moved a lot of stuff there with a free electric pick-up trucklet.

Because I befriended Michele and Maurizio, who both work for the municipal parking organization of Trento, I was able to use the Ecomobile for a bit longer than the usual 2 hours. Last night I was invited for dinner at Michele’s girlfriend’s place, which was great. I mostly spoke Italian, but Michele speaks Russian very well, he’s been to many former Soviet countries on his motorbike (and also to India, Nepal and many more places) and he’s planning to drive through South America next year!

On Thursday I went to a concert of a trio of musicians playing anarchist and anti-fascist songs in a tiny “private club”. Our place is conveniently located between my work (or rather, my free lunch) and the center of Trento. It’s slightly uphill though, from the city center, but somehow I had rides there all the time. And I will have one very soon, since I have a tiny bit more stuff to move, and Paolo will arrive here shortly so we can quickly do some work and then I can meet Michele and his girlfriend again tonight.

On Monday the washing machine will be installed and hopefully the heater will be fixed, it’s leaking a little bit right now.

Right after posting amylin just sent me some cute pictures of her new haircut. amylin with short hair in New York

She’s still quite unsure about it, but I think it looks totally fkn awesome!
amylin with short hair in New York

Civil engagement on social networks

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-10-06
in hospitality exchange
. 0 Comments

Looking for some candidate blogs to add to Planet Hospitality I stumbled upon Spurring civic engagement on Facebook, Myspace and SixDegrees.org.

For the moment, while Facebook’s Causes and Myspace’s Impact seem a welcome change in allowing some use of these networks for more civic purposes, it seems as though they’ve hobbled their tools enough and created a weak-enough attachment that we’re skeptical that a lot of civic good (beyond some fundraising) will take place.  We’ll hope that the next generation of tools is significantly more powerful.

I don’t believe it’s just a matter of adding powerful tools to so-called social networks. MySpace and Facebook are mostly about connecting people in the online world. To do good however, the real world needs to change. And collecting a bunch of money for a good cause might sometimes help. Even though there are some noteworthy exceptions, I’ve read, seen and experienced enough of the NGO World to know that this will never end serious issues like hunger and poverty.

I think it becomes more interesting when the social network is the cause itself.  I was made to believe that this was the case for CouchSurfing, and I worked my ass off, but unfortunately I was seriously misled. Though it won’t be the solution to all the world’s problems, I still think that real social networks have a chance of enacting serious change. My bets are on  BeWelcome,  more decentralized alternatives or even something radically new.

Planet Hospitality

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-10-06
in hospitality exchange
. 2 Comments

A Planet is a website that aggregates a lot of other blogs.  Tonight I set up Planet Hospitality. This specific planet should obviously mostly be about hospitality exchange. Posts can be philosophical, personal, political, scientific, or just funny.

Check the Crash at Mine Wiki if you want your blog to be aggregated on Planet as well. For this it’s best if you start using a category or label hospitality exchange.

Montreal, Boston, NYC, Dublin, Treviso, Verona, Trento

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-10-01
in Italy, United States, hitchhiking and hospitality exchange
. 4 Comments

We left Morgan a bit later than planned. I really didn’t sleep well with the prospect of waking up at 5AM. We started of taking a bus out of Montreal, at 9:16. Hitching in Quebec is easy. We had a couple of short rides, and then a ride down to Burlington, a college town in Vermont (in the US, the State of Cheese). Like most college towns, it was easy to hitch out of there. But then we were in a shitty spot. We waited a long time, till we finally walked to a traffic light, where someone was so friendly to drive out of his way. amylin prefers “on-ramp hitching”, that is waiting at on-ramps, but our luck with that had been mediocre in the US, so I decided to change strategy and be dropped at a rest area. The first guy we saw asked if we were hiking, and I said “well, we’re hitchhiking”, and we were treated to a long ride and an interesting life story. We made it to Boston that night where we had interesting conversations about Esperanto, veganism and (not for me) push-bikes with our hosts.

The next day we met up with John and his wife. After fruitfully working together on CS and later BeWelcome, for almost one year, it was great to finally meet John.

Later that day we took the Chinatown bus to NYC and went all the way to the upper point of Manhattan. The next day we walked a lot, saw some German thing at the Goethe Institut, with pictures and some dude who was going to go around the world with his motorcycle. The guy taking pictures was very interested in amylin and me. Rightly so, we were by far the most colorful people around. Friday I had to say bye to amylin :( and take a plane to Dublin. My flight arrived in the very early morning, and I basically had a stop-over of 23 hours. Fortunately, through BeWelcome I had found out that Matthew, who was my guest in Paris in 2004, was now living in Dublin. So I had a place to crash for a couple of hours.

The check-in for my next flight (with another Irish low budget company) was at 4 in the morning. Since there’s no nightly public transport, nor cheap taxis, I had to take my bus there at 23:00.

I arrived at Treviso around 9AM. I slept a bit in the first train, changed to the other one, and then got to Verona, to find out that there was a train strike, and no trains going north until after 21:00. Shit!

Well, just hitchhike, I thought. I saw a car in front of the station, and fortunately they took me to a better spot. But, not too great. So, from there I started walking, and walking. Into a bar, for a toilet, a pen (for my sign) and a cola. Then, more walking. Walking. Walking. And I walked more. I started to feel quite unhappy about all the Italians that were speeding by without stopping when someone finally stopped and took me for 15 km or so. From there, same story.

Italians are wary of strangers!

I ended up on a spot where I had found a ride straight to Trento the first time. But I wasn’t so lucky this time. I was getting thirsty. I saw some black people in the backyard of a house and they were from Ghana and very nice. A guy gave me a big bottle of mineral water.

After a while I decided to walk. And walk. Until there was a point in the road with construction work and a traffic light where all cars had to stop for a while. Finally I saw a small Fiat and got my ride.

Until a couple of kilometers before Roveretto, where I was picked up after not too long. By a very friendly Albanian couple, who started explaining that Italians are bastards. They dropped me off at the station, where the trains still weren’t going. So at 19:00 I finally took a bus to Trento, where I was treated to an excellent vegetarian meal. I woke up at 16:00 this afternoon…

Crashing at Morgan’s in Montreal

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-09-25
in United States, hitchhiking, hospitality exchange and wiki
. 5 Comments

amylin and I have been crashing at Morgan’s (6 1/2) in Montreal since Thursday.  We hitchhiked here from Northampshire, MA, where we stayed with Joe. We had left a bit later than planned so it was not easy to get to Montreal. There are hardly any cars driving from the US to Canada these days, not even Canadians, even though the CAN$ is almost exactly worth as much as the US$ these days.  I booked progress in many projects, and it even looks as if Paolo and I might be able to finish our first paper next week.  I also added some wiki integration to Morgan’s Crash project.

Tomorrow we’ll be leaving for Boston again.

Here’s another picture, actually taken without my presence, but it’s appropriate…

amylin with Montreal sign

One Million Forgotten Moments

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-09-14
in United States, hospitality exchange and trust metrics
. 0 Comments

amylin cut off her dreadlocks last night. Today she is frantically trying to comb out the remains of her dreads. Last night we also went to a great theater show, we were in an audience of 20, sitting inside, watching tens of “actors” performing on the sidewalk and on the street, mingling with omunexpecting by-passers. Very entertaining!

This week was also great for dumpster diving. It’s just too easy in New York. I also got some work done on TrustLet and spent too much time writing stuff about the CouchSurfing Leadership Team. Fortunately I also booked some progress with getting other people hacking on the BeWelcome code. I can’t wait till it’s finally released under the GPL, so that I can just add a link to the one-file BW Rox for Windows I’m working on.

So, now I hope that my dreadless dear will fix me a new layout for this blog  some time soon.

Addendum, October 2007

I mostly fixed the layout myself, but at least she just sent me this picture.

amylin and me watching million forgotten moments

Guaka Mole in Trento

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-09-01
in United States, hospitality exchange and trust metrics
. 0 Comments

It’s crazy how it’s possible to be together most of the time for one year while traveling, but not when staying in one place. I hope that humanity will be able to get rid of borders some day, well, rather sooner than later. Anyway, I’m flying to New York next week, to see my love!

Unfortunately I can’t stay as long as I would like to. Paolo doesn’t let me. I’m happy we booked a lot of progress with the TrustLet code. And today I even came up with the GuakaMole trust metric, which is the best trust metric of the ones we’ve tried so far on the Advogato dataset.

I’ll be coming back over Dublin, where I hope to stay with matthew75. He was one of my guests in Paris in 2004, and now he happens to be living in Dublin. I found him again on BeWelcome.org. It’s amazing how small world networks work.

Now I can’t wait to see amylin, for a hand massage and delish vegan munchies! Tomorrow I’m taking a 15 euro train to Kufstein, which is right next to the German border, then I’ll hitch to the Netherlands from there.

Weak links

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-08-28
in books, hospitality exchange and trust metrics
. 0 Comments

Yesterday I started reading Barabasi’s “Linked: The New Science of Networks”. It’s inspiring, in many ways. It makes me realize how different my life is, compared to most nodes in the social network of human connections. I have many connections, but compared to most people, most of my links are weak. I met so many people in so many places, mostly for very brief periods - i.e. a ride in their car, staying one night at someone’s home. Or just meeting someone randomly in the street.

Besides these realizations, the book is also giving me more energy to move TrustLet forward. Last month I was a bit pre-occupied with the way CouchSurfing is organized. I hope there will be an announcement, that CS is just a service from now on, and that many occurrences of “participation” and “participate” will be removed from the website. Anyway, there will be a big campaign to attract volunteers and members to BeWelcome in October.